Roy glanced at him. “You know her. Or of her—code name, Tiger?”

The name shifted through him, locked in place. “German. Black ops. Rumor has it she was captured.”

“Escaped. She’s a freelancer now.”

There were other adjectives for her circling through the clandestine community—sexy, calculating, lethal.

“She’s a friend,” Roy said, as if to put to bed the questions in York’s mind. “She’ll keep RJ safe. I promise.”

His words only raised more questions. But Roy said nothing more, his face barely illuminated by the dash lights.

“Did Logan say anything more about the flight we managed to save?”

As if on cue, his back began to hurt, and for a moment, he was watching the glow of flames upon the dark waters of the Ionian Sea, a hoo-rah rising through him at seeing the EMP bomb that had been aimed at a commercial jet sink into the sea.

Then, of course, Martin had surprised him with a blade to the back, then a second stab with a twist, chewing up his insides.

He would have sunk to the bottom of the sea, along with the boat he’d destroyed, if it hadn’t been for RJ and Roy finding him in the water.

“Like I said, all doctors and researchers from various African countries. She did discover that they were en-route to a medical conference in Florence and had scheduled to meet the new CDC director—Landon Grey. He just took over a couple weeks ago.”

“What happened to the previous director?”

“Car accident.” Roy turned again and headed over the bridge. The moon dappled the water. Ahead, the hulking mass of the ruined Heidelberg castle overlooked the village below the cliffs.

I’m on my way, RJ. Please stay put.

“Any idea what they were meeting with him about?”

Roy touched the brakes as he came up on a driver of a scooter. “He was at the base checking on quarantine protocols since they’re the first stop out of Africa or the Middle East for our soldiers. Maybe they were giving him updates on the current viruses coming out of Africa. He is headed to the Florence conference too, according to Coco.”

The scooter turned off and Roy slowed as they approached old town, with the narrow, cobbled streets, the ancient buildings, with darkened shops at the base and apartments with lights glowing out from closed blinds above.

Yes, it would make a decent place for an Airbnb.

And his brain just found its way back to the hotel room in Paris, the one he’d rented with the hopes of proposing in a restaurant in the Eiffel tower. A reservation that got trampled on by one superstar, arrogant, wanna-be spy actor named Winchester Marshall who, yes, also happened to be RJ’s cousin.

Who really, after all, started this entire mess when he got them ousted from the hotel coffee shop.